22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-6.6.R1

A SEMI-IMMERSIVE SYNTHETIC ENVIRONMENT FOR COOPERATIVE AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL

F. Persiani, I. Liverani
DIEM - Università di Bologna, v.le Risorgimento, 2, 40136 Bologna – Italy

Keywords: air traffic control, virtual reality, enhanced visualization, 3d interaction.

Nowadays many software applications in Air Traffic Control manage ATC data in bidimensional maps, so the modern workstations interfaces in some extent lack of interactivity and require the interpretation of large amount of data presented in very synthetic or symbolic way. In this paper a new interface for real 3D ATC data visualization and interaction is presented; it exploits a Virtual Reality immersive technique to give the operator an intuitive tool for managing air traffic approaching airports in crowded areas. ATC-VR is a smart computer-human interface developed to allow the operator to keep all variables under control on a Virtual Reality desk. Using stereoscopic glasses and 3-D pointing devices the operator can “fly through” a scenery, in which a “tactical” situation is represented superimposing a realistic rendering of the landscape, aircrafts flying in the area and big amount of graphical information concerning flight paths, constraints, predicted underseparations, weather conditions, etc. Interacting with the 3-D graphical representations, the operator can manage the traffic while the software acts as a supervisor allowing only actions which are compatible with the constrains. This kind of interface allows also multiple operators co-operating at the same time in directing the air traffic.

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